Photos by Nicolas Calcott for Paris By Appointment Only™

If you asked Parisians ten years ago what Pilates (pronounced “Pilottes”) was, they would have answered you with their habitual I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about-you-may-as-well-come-from-Mars shoulder shrug and dismissive lip fart.

But oh how the times have changed. Now, almost every sports club and well-being center is offering some kind of Pilates class, just like every grocery store these days has some kakamayme organic product line that they’re pushing. The point is that finding a fabulous, authentic, personalized Pilates studio in Paris can be as costly as it is exhausting. But now you can save your Euros and your breath because I have the Pilates pro for you!

Long, lean, strong and supple, American-raised, Paris-based Annie Venier is a walking and talking advertisement for Pilates.  As well she should be, she’s been doing it now for close to fifteen years. Venier fell into the discipline quite literally by accident. After a running injury knocked her off her feet, she found herself in search of a deep, therapeutic strength-building alternative. She got hooked immediately, and before long quit her job to pursue a new career as a Pilates professional.

Certified by The Pilates Center of Boulder Colorado, Venier moved to Paris in 2003 and opened up her one-woman Pilates studio two years ago. Located on the second floor of a residential building near the Jardin du Luxembourg, her word-of-mouth studio is as discreet and private as it gets. The two-room studio has a sun-filled space with a Reformer machine and lots of accessories, while the Fame-like dance room next door is used for group mat classes.

Venier is a fun, straight-talking professor whose prior-life as a painter has a tendency to creep into her descriptive vocabulary. She may asked you to hug Pavorotti, walk in goo, slide like a piece of ham between two slices of bread, or grow giant feet while you’re doing one of the various exercises she has incorporated into your personalized Pilates routine.

So what is Venier’s unique approach to this method invented by Joseph Pilates in the 1920s? Here’s Venier’s list of the top 5 benefits to pursuing Pilates.

1. Healing the body and preventing injuries: “I didn’t go into Pilates with a perfect healthy body so when I look at someone who has a fear of movement due to pain, I can relate to that. For me, Pilates is therapeutic. With each client I try to create a program that will not only make their body look great, but help them feel better in that body too. Pilates creates a structure that will keep you pain-free and teaches you habits that will prevent you from twisting, pulling your back or moving carelessly.”

2. Breaking routines and building a healthy system: “We ordinarily use our large muscle groups when we work out. Pilates is about creating a total-body healthy system, which means that all of the little pieces that link together with the big muscles also have to be strong and healthy. There are all sorts of little muscles that we never use because we do the same thing over an over again. Pilates gets you out of your routine, and helps you discover all of these tiny balancing and deep core muscles.”

3. Feeling and seeing the results of improved balance: “Pilates gives you balance between your muscles and your bones and your relationship to gravity. You feel centered, and your body becomes more symmetrical. When the joints are aligned and everything is falling into place, it’s attractive. You have long, lean, sculpted muscles. A balanced body is a beautiful body.”

4. Increasing your strength: “Pilates teaches you how to recruit core strength, which for an athlete, or anyone who wants to be stronger in what they’re doing, is fantastic.  Be it golfing, or swimming, or tennis or just hauling shopping bags up stars, it gives you a much more performant body. Because you’ve learned how to connect your hands and your feet with your core, this additional powerhouse now fuels any activity you do.”

5. Breathing, centering and self-awareness: “We get more of our energy from breathing than anything else. Pilates helps you use your breath, its rhythm and the rhythm of the body to calm down and to listen to what your body needs.”

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Schedule: private and group classes with Annie Venier are by appointment only.
Prices: From 65€ for a private class to 25€ for group class when you purchase a 10-session card.
Contact:  lepetitstudiobis@yahoo.fr, tel: + 33 6 98 12 64 18

Monsieur Ho is to feet as Yves Saint Laurent was to fashion—worshiped by his clients and envied by his rivals as a master of his medium.  For the last three decades his name has been passed secretly from one glamorous parisienne to another as the best pedicurist in town. None other than La Deneuve, France’s most famous and demanding diva, is his number one fan.

“Many of my clients, like Madame Deneuve, have followed me since my beginning at Carita 27 years ago,” explains Ho, a discreet and soft-spoken man who cares for his word-of-mouth clientele in his own private salon near the Champs Elysées.

In French,  pedicure means something entirely different from your twenty-buck NYC pedi.  It’s a curative treatment that only a podiatrist can perform, while beauté des pieds refers to the typical scrub and polish you get at your average nail salon. Monsieur Ho is both podiatrist and esthetician, meaning he can cure your feet and make them look divine. In a city where fashionable (read: uncomfortable) shoes are de rigeur at every age, his services bring springs back into steps.

“When it comes to shoes, comfort and aesthetics don’t mix. If they feel good, they’re ugly. That’s why I have such a steady clientele.”

Behind the rice-paper sliding doors of his mahogany-and-cream waiting area is a room the size of most studio apartments, outfitted with a single, Emperor’s throne of a chair. You’re asked to change out of your shoes and into a pair of plush slippers before ascending the steps to your perch. Lulled by the low-lit paper lamps and soothing water sounds playing in the background, you sink into the comfy leather lounge chair while Ho assumes his station at the tips of your feet.

After a lovely little foot bath and quick nail trim, Ho gets down to business. First he prepares his instruments: a thin, surgical knife (bistoury) and a slender gouge, both outfitted with fresh, disposable blades. With gouge in hand he starts working around the perimeter of each nail, carefully dislodging any dead skin that’s built up over and around them.

Once all of the skin has been ousted, he scrapes it all away with his scalpel using tiny gentle gestures so that each nail is perfectly clean. Next up? The soles of the feet. After reading your feet with his fingers, he takes his scalpel to offending mounds and patches being careful not too take off too much, then smooths the soles with a fine, hand-held file.

“The bottoms of our feet are our natural insoles, you want to keep a slight thickness for protection when we walk.”

Then comes the epic-long filing of the nails. Using five different files (emery, metal, mousse, etc), each one finer than the last, he gets nails as smooth and soft as crystal before performing the final climatic finish: the chamois cloth buffing that stimulates blood flow to the toes and leaves nails naturally rosy and glistening for up to a month.

Have a look below at Mr. Ho polishing my toes:

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Price: 150E per hour
Availability: Send me an email to be put in touch with Mr. Ho
House Calls: For an extra fee, Mr. Ho will come to your hotel room or apartment

The man who recreated Marie Antoinette’s favorite fragrance opens his first shop in Paris this month. You can go there to pick up off-beat gems like fragrant bubbles and paper, or, better yet, make an appointment to have this prince of perfume design your signature scent.

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While on a red eye flight home to Paris in 2001, the young, talented French perfumer Francis Kurkdjian was enjoying small talk with the woman beside him about their respective lines of work. It was a lovely tête-à-tête, full of funny coincidences and friends in common, but the conversation, however casual, was about to change his life!

Having already designed top-selling fragrances for big name brands (Le Mâle for Jean Paul Gaultier; Miracle Homme for Lancôme; Green Tea for Elizabeth Arden) and won prestigious industry prizes (the Francois Coty Perfumer Award in 2001, at the ripe age of 32!) Kurkdjian was itching for an exciting new career twist.

His words didn’t fall on deaf ears. By the time we walked off the plane he had his most thrilling order yet: a private commission to design a made-to-measure scent for his well-heeled neighbor, Terry de Gunzburg, founder of the luxurious beauty brand by Terry and former creative director of YSL Beauté. (Note to self: Start talking to people on planes.)

De Gunzburg naturally fell head over heals for the one-of-a-kind Fleur d’Oranger that Kurkdjian crafted specifically for her, and before he knew it le tout Paris was buzzing about his original olfactory works of art.  It didn’t take long before overseas beauties sniffed him out and he was back on those red eyes following his clients around the globe with his “labomobile,” a Pinel et Pinel custom steamer truck filled with over 200 scent samples.

“For me, it’s all about the de-dramatization of luxury and finding that perfect balance between tradition and modernity,” says Kurkdjian, while playing with the compartments of his nifty nomad lab.

Before each appointment he fills his magic box with a new range of raw materials to best suit his client’s taste. After the meeting (akin to a therapy session with perfumed memory triggers) Kurkdjian spends the next three months tweaking his formula, sending samples back and forth until he gets two thumbs up. From there, the juice is bottled in two gorgeous hand-engraved dark green glass flacons, packed into handmade Italian fabric boxes and shipped off to the lucky client. The secret formula is stored away for future flacons, never to be shared with anyone else.

“My style is about having no style. Other fragrance houses tailor their creations, even the customized scents, to fit their brand’s identity. I don’t have those limitations.”

So, just how far can he go? “It’s just a question of time and budget,” says the wild child of perfume, who in addition to bespoke fragrance also does on-site olfactory installations like perfumed fountains (at the Château de Versailles, no less) and edible collaborations with pastry chefs such as Christophe Michalak of the Plaza Athénée.

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Call or email well in advance to schedule an appointment:
E-mail: surmesure@franciskurkdjian.com
Phone: + 33 (0)1 42 77 40 22
Price: €8,000 and up for made-to-measure; €2,500-5,000 for demi-couture (an adaptation of an existing scent)
Boutique: 5 rue d’Alger 75001 Paris

All images by Nicholas Calcott for Paris By Appointment Only

There are dying languages, endangered foods and vanishing artisanal techniques. But did you know that there were therapeutic ancient massages that needed saving too??

Always willing to rally for a good cause (what a martyr, I know) I headed out to the 14th arrondissement to find out more about Dâm Bop Tâm Quât, a rare and endangered Vietnamese healing massage that blends techniques from the North and South of the country.

A natural remedy for stress, nervous tension, sleep disorders and emotional imbalance for nearly 500 years, the deep relaxation massage consists of gentle kneading and tapping movements along the body’s energy meridians.

Taught exclusively from master to disciple or within the family, the method is practiced by a dwindling group of master masseurs who rarely leave the Vietnamese community.

Ousé-An, a cozy, two-room massage parlor in Paris, however, is breaking with tradition and keeping this ancient art alive by sharing it with stressed-out non-Vietnamese too. Just a 20 minute metro ride from the city center in a residential part of town, Ousé An is the sole Parisian address to offer Dâm Bop Tâm Quât as well as a smattering of other traditional Vietnamese massages and Asian energy exercises such as Qi Gong, Tai Chi and Tao Yin.

The owners of this delightful zen den, Tu Minh Tan and his Italian wife Perlita Ferri, met in Paris in the early 2000’s at a martial arts course that Minh Tan was teaching.  Already an expert in martial arts and Chinese massage, he was finishing his grueling decade-long spiritual and technical apprenticeship with a Vietnamese massage master during their courtship. It wasn’t long before Ferri (thank you!!) convinced her husband to share his special skills with a larger audience.

“Before I only practiced within the Vietnamese community. Now thanks to Perlita, a bridge has been made so that others can discover the massage as well,” smiles Ming Tan.

I’m not going to try and recall the details of the massage I received, which was a ½ hour Vietnamese head massage, because I was semi-conscious state for most of it as Ferri gently tapped, kneaded, pressed and released along my neck, forehead, scalp, eyes, brows and jaw. But there was a moment towards the end when she pushed against the inside of my ears and unplugged my body from its energy supply, leaving my nerves tingly after the current was cut.

“We can liberate an incredible amount of tension by placing pressure on specific parts of the body,” she said with a smile, my limp body illustrating her point perfectly.

“No kidding,” I replied, as I grafted my body off the futon and floated weightlessly to the door.

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Prices: 60 minutes : 60€; 90 minutes : 90€ : 120 minutes : 120€

Like a trip to the Louvre or stroll around Montmartre, a hammam expedition should be at the top of every Paris to-do list. With close to 80 hammams scattered throughout the city (with larger concentrations, biensûr, in the North African communities) they play a prominent role in Paris’ cultural tapestry.

For the uninitiated, hammams are public bathhouses where people go to steam, scrub, relax, socialize and rejuvenate. Descended from the Romans and modeled after Turkish baths, they consist of interconnected tiled rooms full of steamy air, streaming faucets and half-naked bodies (they’re traditionally single sex, with special co-ed slots at times).

No two hammams are alike. Choose poorly and you could wind up having one of the most harrowing experiences of your life (believe me!); choose wisely, and you’ll be tempted to swear off sunshine forever.

Since the bathing offerings at hammams are pretty much standard, what sets them apart is their atmosphere (from hospital stark to warm and Moorish), and size (from William Klein’s Club Allegro Fortissimo to what you see below).

That is why if you can’t squeeze a trip down to Marrakesh, a journey to Les Cents Ciels is your best bet for authentic, luxurious bathing en mass. Located in a posh suburb of Paris twenty minutes by metro from the center of town, this lantern-lit, 1000m2 hamman (the biggest in Europe) is filled with cozy couches, starry ceilings, vaulted walkways, and a gorgeous mosaic-tiled steam room big enough to fit a couple of American baseball teams (now that’s a yummy image).

As soon as you cross the threshold to Les Cents Ciels you feel like you’ve walked onto the set of “A Thousand and One Nights” only the walls are real, the people aren’t actors and the only costumes worn are meant to get wet. Once you process the dramatic change in scenery from drab suburbia outside, you’re welcome to slip into the house attire (bring your swim suit, they take care of the rest) and journey down the stairs to the various bathing rooms.

I’m told I have one hour of languor in the wet heat before my gommage, and that fifteen minutes before my appointment I should slather myself in a moisturizing sludge to primp my skin for scrubbing. I bake in the sauna and take a dip in the pool before venturing into the main steam room where a handful of ladies lounge about as if Ingres were painting their portrait.

My caramel-coated body joins the scene until I’m moved to a private chamber for my scrub down. With a brillo-like mitt, I’m scoured from neck to toe, flipped over twice, then dumped with buckets of warm water like a baby in a tub; only I’m lying on a table. After a brisk shower and inspection of my now buttery soft, glowing skin, I venture upstairs to one of the low-lit relaxation rooms to snuggle up with my tea on a plush, super sized couch. Despite it being one of the most glorious days of spring, I lay there staring up at the ceiling’s twinkling stars for hours.

Who needs the sun when you’ve got one hundred skies?

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Basic entrance fee: 40E, includes access to hammam, suana, chill out rooms, restaurant & pool.
Extras: treatments such as massage, gommage, and facials need to be booked in advance.
Access: women only, except for evenings (Mon, Wed, Thurs, Fri) and Sunday afternoons (2nd and 4th of each month) when the hammam goes co-ed.
Need to pack: your bathing suit and toiletries

All images courtesy Les Cents Ciels